


point of articulation

by nonbinarywithaknife (littleboxes)



Series: dimension 20 [72]
Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fullmetal Alchemist 2003/Brotherhood Fusion, Angst, Campaign 05: A Crown of Candy, Failed resurrection, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, implied experimentation on animals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:01:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26359894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleboxes/pseuds/nonbinarywithaknife
Summary: Caramelinda enlists Theobald's help in bringing Lazuli back.
Relationships: Caramelinda Rocks/Lazuli Rocks, Theobald Gumbar & Caramelinda Rocks, Theobald Gumbar & Lazuli Rocks
Series: dimension 20 [72]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1706107
Comments: 4
Kudos: 30





	point of articulation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [londer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/londer/gifts).



> based on [elsie's](https://elsie-writes.tumblr.com/) [FMA/ACOC idea](https://elsie-writes.tumblr.com/post/628655070157864960/elsie-writes-hmm-acoc-fullmetal-alchemist-au)!

In the chaos after Lazuli's death, Theo continues to stand guard at her study door. Her study door, because she was there more often than her chambers (until Lady Caramelinda, that is. But Lazuli was a lot of things before Lady Caramelinda.)

He doesn't go in, because he knows what he’ll see if he goes in. He’d see books open on desks written in long dead languages and half completed projects scattered around and bookshelves lined in dust, and it's all wrong, every one prodding at the raw wound of Lazuli's absence. So Theo stands guard, and doesn't go in.

A week passes, and Theo still hasn't been reassigned. He doesn't know if that's because the king's forgotten about him, in his haze of grief, or if the royal family is still deciding how best he should be punished for this failure. 

He hasn't seen Lady Caramelinda in a week. They aren’t friends, not really. Neither made much effort to bridge the cool silence between them. But they both saw Lazuli in a way no one else did. Were both drawn in by her passion, her vision. There was an understanding, in the way Sir Theobald nodded at Lady Caramelinda when she visited her wife, and the way she would nod back at him as she passed by.

He hasn't seen her in a week, and he also hasn’t gone looking, and then she’s here. She’s climbing the stairs like they lead to her execution block, and maybe they do. She doesn't look surprised to see him, and he opens the door for her. They don't speak.

It's long past dark when she leaves, and she does so with papers in her gloved hands.

She comes back, and comes back, and comes back, and every time Theo is standing guard, and it seems like every time she leaves her eyes get a little less dull, and a little more manic.

One day, not too long after that first arrival, when the fog of loss has lessened but still hangs about the castle, cold and oppressive, Lady Caramelinda enters, and looks at Theo, and says, “Come with me,” and leaves the door open.

Theo does. The bookshelves are dusty still, but disturbed. There are open books on the desk but the pages have been recently turned. There is a project scattered about the room, but the ink on the pages is still wet.

Caramelinda tells him that Lazuli was teaching her, and he thinks of the small scroll tucked away in his armor that says _find familiar_ at the top and he isn’t surprised and neither is she. She tells him what the incomplete project on Lazuli's desk is, and she shows him the beginnings of a magic circle on the ground, and the sketches of a plan that is blasphemous, heretical, and not just breaking the laws of nature but warping them beyond recognition. It's selfish. It's wrong.

She asks him, “Will you help, Sir Theobald?”

He tells her, “Of course, Lady Caramelinda.”

“I think, after this, you can call me Caramelinda, Sir Theobald,” she says.

He doesn't. They get to work.

He is formally assigned to protect Lady Caramelinda. She's the one to tell him, a day before his Commander does. He doesn't ask.

She starts sleeping in the study, and Theo only takes off his armor to clean it.

There is blood on the floor, sticky and sweet smelling, from failed experiments.

He casts _find familiar_. They try again. It has no eyes, no mouth, no lungs. It speaks anyway. It’s progress. They try again. 

Their notes get longer, and their goal gets closer, and as they work Lady Caramelinda tells him about long days learning to conjure caramel. He tells her about sitting, ill fitting, in a library, and seeing green flames flicker into life.

They continue on, and Theo leaves food for Cara on the nights the candle never goes out from their corner of the study. She brings him tea, the nights he can't bring himself to stop standing in front of the study door.

It's six months later that Cara looks at Theo with a book in her lap nearly indecipherable with notation and says, “I have it.”

He doesn't ask, “Are you sure?”

He asks, “How soon?”

The final circle isn't drawn on the floor of Lazuli's study. Instead, they draw it on the cold stone floor of an old, old castle cellar. A place Theo only knows from the whispers of the servants that pass him in the halls.

There are layers upon layers of runes, concentric circles wrapped so tightly it took them months to perfect the pattern. The sucrosi letters almost form the shape of a bulb, if you look closely.

It's a spell that shouldn't exist, that doesn't want to be written. It’s been fighting creation every step of the way, but the chalk is swiped against stone and it loses.

Cara opens the book. They start speaking.

The circle is alight, and the air is so thick it almost chokes them, but the light coalesces into a body, and a marbled hand is reaching out, to her, to him, and then-

Warped, dissolved, sugar half-spun, she screams at them, and the horror rises.

Cara clings to the circle, and Theo flips frantically through pages that are being ripped apart. It isn't enough. The pages aren’t the only thing being ripped away.

His sugar dissolves, cherry red against not-Lazuli's fractal blue, and Cara screams through one more loss, and keeps casting.

  
  


Their mom likes long sleeves. They don't understand why, until one day Ruby asks why her left hand is so smooth. The hardened caramel prosthetic makes a hollow sound when Cara taps on it. For once, they see the look on her face and don't ask questions. 

(to her. When they ask Pops, he frowns and tells them not to pry into their mom's business. And that he doesn't know.) 

(Amethar was fighting a war when there was an accident in the cellar of the castle that only two souls know about. He was too busy grieving two sisters, not one, when he came back, to notice the quiet changes.) 

Caramelinda is the Queen of Candia, its sole ruler for all intents and purposes. She doesn’t have time to spend in her wife’s library, researching something already proved to fail. She doesn’t, and yet.

Sir Theobald is dedicated to his work. Devoted. More than that. Sir Theobald _is_ his work, and he hasn't taken off his helmet while on-duty once in the two decades since Archmage Lazuli's death. 

Ruby and Jet weasel him about it. Poke and pry and weedle. He frowns at them, and it's amazing the facial expressions you can convey in just a word- _princesses_ \- and their mom tells them _that's enough, girls_. The lack of reaction is boring, and they move on. 

Theo tells himself that he was basically living in his armor anyway, and just like it has for the past two decades, the lie tastes sour on the tongue he no longer has.


End file.
